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Philosophy
at Work.
The Virtues
of Virtual
A philosophy of
how dispersed
organizations
succeed
think Philosophy
at Work.
better.
At Philosophy at Work, we believe that the pursuit of
wisdom is a crucial, and increasingly practical driver of
professional success. In a world of work, so often characterised
by complexity, uncertainty and change, an understanding of
what is good and true provides a much-needed foundation.
do
Philosophy literally means ‘the love of wisdom’.
Through our virtual and in-person training workshops,
facilitated team sessions and keynote talks, we help businesses
pursue wisdom in ways that are uplifting and authentic to them.
In real terms: our work produces more self-aware people who
better.
have greater cognitive confidence and are better able to make
strategic decisions, navigate uncertainty, and ask the right
questions at the right time. While we are academically trained
philosophers skilled in the art of reflection and logic, we are also
highly experienced facilitators known for creating a safe space
for groups to tackle real professional challenges.
All of our sessions are highly interactive, involve sharp
insight and are always designed with professional application
in mind. We love connecting philosophical ways of thinking
with professionals from all walks of life because we know the
pursuit of wisdom can make a real and practical difference
We help in their day-to-day work.
businesses We hope that this report resonates with you. Get in touch
think at if you would like to digest it together.
their best
PHILOSOPHYAT WORK .CO.UK INFO@ PHILOSOPHYAT WORK .CO.UKIntroduction
Introduction
HowKeeping it
do we work Virtue 4 Conclusion
together,
well when
together, when Virtue 2 Collegiality Take Courage
we’re not Accountability Questions to pg. 44
you’re nottogether?
together help you cultivate
pg. Questions to
XX6 help you activate Collegiality
Accountability pg. 30
pg. 16
Feature
Feature Human Rights
The 4 Day Week & New Ways
by Naeema Pasha of Working
Virtue 1 pg. 22 by Susie Alegra
Democracy pg. 36
Questions to
help you design
Democracy
pg. 8
Feature Virtue 3 Virtue 5 Contributors
Humanising Tech Clarity Understanding pg. 46
by Nexthink Questions Questions to Endnotes
pg. 14 to help you help you unpack pg. 48
create Clarity Understanding Making notes
pg. 24 pg. 38
pg. 50Introduction to remote ways of working. Each virtue
is presented in a particular context, but
each one can provide value throughout
How do we organisations more broadly.
For Aristotle, virtues are context
work well sensitive. The same goes for the virtues
together,
we’ve identified. To help you and
his words, “virtue is the golden mean your organisation get the most out of
when we’re between two vices, the one of excess and
the other of deficiency”. Put simply: if
this report, each section ends with 3
questions that you and your team can use
not together? you want to live well, practice living in the
balance between extremes.
Today, as organisations grapple with
as you digest what a given virtue means in
your particular context.
As we researched best practice in
virtual working, it is understandable virtual organisations, we met some
Whatever else is true about going for them to react in ways that are, to brilliant people, many of whom you will
virtual, one thing can be said with Aristotle’s point, either excessive or meet throughout the report. You’ll find
reasonable confidence: virtual deficient. In this report, we’ve tried to moments to pause from the main report
working means navigating new explain those understandable (but less and digest alternative perspectives
landscapes, and new landscapes than ideal) ways of working with a good from international human rights lawyer
make people behave in strange dose of empathy, but shine a light on Susie Alegre, as well as our friends at
ways. With the trappings of the the more balanced approaches we’ve Nexthink and Henley Business School.
traditional office disrupted, found some organisations taking. Those Throughout we’ll share perspectives
previously well-adjusted bosses balanced approaches are what we call from the following interviewees we
may revert to micro-management, the virtues of virtual. To our modern ears, were lucky enough to speak with for
confident colleagues can become ‘virtues’ might sound moralistic. But for this report: Bruce Daisley (ex-Twitter VP
people-pleasers, and the well- Aristotle, and for us, virtues are less about and author of Eat, Sleep, Work Repeat),
organised among us are liable to go toeing the line and more about reaching Michelle Davies (People VP at Phrasee),
into overdrive. our full potential. Jon Barnes (founder, speaker, and
Throughout this report, we have author of Democracy Squared), and
How do we work well together, when identified 5 virtues of virtual. They are: Samantha Clarke (happiness consultant,
we’re not together? The insight shared Democracy, Accountability, Clarity, changemaker, and author of Love It or
here found its spark in the philosophy Collegiality, and Understanding. Each Leave It).
of Aristotle, that ancient Greek master virtue is introduced in the context of We hope what you find here helps your
of ideas. Specifically, we have found a major area of organisational life that organisation succeed in whatever form
Aristotle’s approach to the ‘good life’ to is commonly beset by overreactions of virtual working you navigate.
provide an incredibly helpful lens through and underreactions to virtual work.
which to see organisational success in the For example, we unpack the virtue of
virtual context more clearly. accountability in response to learnings
Aristotle’s guidance on how to live well that emerge from the excessive and
boiled down to trading extreme reactions deficient reactions that ‘leadership and
for balanced, thoughtful responses. In management’ often portray when moving
6 The Virtues of Virtual: Philosophy at Work Introduction 7D
Virtue 1: Democracy wants to hop onto Zoom). Perhaps a different
crew have migrated from Dropbox because
Democracy
they’ve found they tend to collaborate better
The office has changed. No longer limited to in Google Drive, while another team has done
a physical address, the place of work is now the reverse.
characterised less by bricks and mortar and
more by Zoom calls and the ability to work While the excess is undeniably chaotic, with
from bed if you so desire. If where you lay your it comes a few essential lessons. Teams
head counts as ‘home’, the ability to access and individual contributors will gravitate
wifi now makes ‘offices’ materialise out of towards technology that makes their work
thin air. Gone is your frustrating commute, more productive and their lives easier. The
smelly shared refrigerator, and need for right tools have the potential to save time
smart trousers (or any trousers at all). Also and prevent a host of frustrations, and giving
gone are your previous tools, processes, people the freedom to seek out these tools
and norms for project management. There is beneficial from two angles. First, team
are no physical conference rooms for large members can identify otherwise unknown
group meetings, quiet places for one-on-one technology that can prove game-changing
meetings, or whiteboards and easels filled for their colleagues. Second, the process
with post-it notes and to-dos to track your of finding and successfully rolling out a
team’s progress. new tool to the team can be an enormously
empowering experience for an employee.
The excessive reaction is total
technological proliferation. This occurs The deficient reaction is total control.
when greater freedom is given to an If the aforementioned proliferation of Trello,
organisation’s employees to choose which Dropbox, Google Drive, Slack, PukkaTeam,
technologies work best for them, and it and Zoom amounted to an excessive reaction,
had already begun happening when the the deficient response is a strict adherence
physical office reigned supreme. Documents to tools as decided on high. Proliferation is,
were shared via Dropbox, video calls with in theory, controllable if managers clamp
colleagues in other offices happened on down on which systems employees can
Zoom, and short written communication use. An executive in one such organisation
was typed into Slack. Now that we’ve might decide that everyone should migrate
gone completely virtual, organisations are to Microsoft Teams, for example, to calm
getting even more scrappy when it comes the waters of digital chaos. However, the
to deploying new tech. One of your team threats to worker autonomy implicit in such
members has found that she tracks her a reaction, and the linked detrimental impact
work best in Trello, and a few others working on employee well-being and company
on projects with her have jumped on the culture, can make this robust control and real
bandwagon. Another group of colleagues has organisational flourishing unlikely bed-fellows.
Balance choice with control discovered PukkaTeam, a video-conferencing
app where you can call anyone who has set his While the deficiency is despotic, it can still
status as available (taking the extra steps out be instructive. Our executive’s reaction,
of sending him a Slack message to see if he though excessive, is not without cause. With
8 The Virtues of Virtual: Philosophy at Work Virtue 1: Democracy 9each new technology introduced ad hoc, extensive feedback from the team, scheduling
communication becomes more complex and specific periods for employees to experiment
FRICTIONS
information possibly siloed. Moreover, a tool with new tools in a controlled fashion
that two team members find intuitive and to measure impact and inform broader
beneficial for their work might be totally ill- decisions, empowering these employees to
suited to a third collaborator, which is hardly make the go/no-go decision on the tested
AMONG
fair and absolutely suboptimal for remote tools, and holding formal meetings and
teamwork. In fact, team members having to presentations where the employees--not
adopt by default the tools their colleagues managers-- introduce their team to the tools
have decided work best for themselves is they’ve decided to implement.
LEADERS ,
decidedly disempowering. Organisational change consultant Jon
Barnes is a major advocate of democracy
The virtue is democracy. “What we need to in the workplace and giving employees the
do with tech is figure out how to help it serve opportunity to own organisational decisions
us instead of us serving it,” says Love It or around tech. “When I talk about democracy,
Leave It author and happiness consultant
Samantha Clarke. If individuals know what
tools truly serve them and if leaders know
I’m talking about systems self-organising,
and I frame self-organising in technology
as much as I do in politics or sociology,”
their teams, and
their tech mean
that letting everyone make these decisions he explains. However, he specifies that
independently is a recipe for collaborative delegating the selection of tools does not
disaster, then the happy middle lies in the involve completely losing oversight over an
that the raw
creation of a structure and process that organisation. “There’s a very popular irony
lets employees nominate new pieces of that an autocrat dictates democracy, where a
technology to be reviewed by other members CEO says ‘OK, now we’re democratic,’” Barnes
materials to build
of the organisation before rolling them out. jokes. “Weirdly, this has happened very
Does the three-part process of “nominate, successfully, albeit in the early stages, it sucks
review, adopt” sound familiar? a little.” In other words, organisational leaders
Democracy in choosing technological are responsible for authoritatively creating
tools is widely accepted best practice
among software engineers, who historically
have been some of the greatest adopters of
the protocols and processes necessary for
employees to work democratically. And, as in
all democracies, there are necessary frictions solutions are
being mined
collaborative tools. In 2017, the firm DevOps throughout. Although this report draws
Research and Assessment found that primarily on the philosophy of Aristotle, we
developer teams were both most productive will echo Barnes here and heavily paraphrase
and happiest when they were empowered that other great thinker, Marcus Aurelius, who
by management to choose the tools that said that the mind can adapt to any challenge
suited them best. According to Google so that “an obstacle in a given path becomes
Cloud’s handbook on developer operations, an advance”. Our take? Embrace the stage
an effective technology democracy requires where virtual sucks a little, because those
deep consideration and iterations along frictions among leaders, their teams, and their
the following steps: constantly seeking tech mean that the raw materials to build
out potential new technologies, regularly solutions are being mined. That is democracy
reviewing current tech and soliciting in action.
10 The Virtues of Virtual: Philosophy at Work Virtue 1: Democracy 111 23
3 questions
to help
you design
Democracy
Aristotle reminds us
that virtues are context
sensitive. In the changing What are the specific Are we excited about this If I choose this tool, will I
virtual landscape, this problems I am observing in technology because it is be able to turn at least a few
means that in order to really my team, and what are the new and “advanced,” or do members of my team into
flourish, your technology tools and technologies that we actually think that it will evangelists to ensure its
needs to be rolled out in
address those problems seriously benefit our team? broad adoption?
ways that are appropriate
directly?
to your organisation, your Blame our hunter-gatherer origins, but The fastest way for a tool to fail is for
people, and the relevant When challenges seem overwhelming, we are predisposed to get excited about no one to use it. If you know that there
cultures therein. we tend to make blanket statements shiny new stimuli when they enter our are members of your team who are
about everything that’s not working. field of vision (or email inbox). When excited about a tool and willing (perhaps
For example, we might say, “we don’t learning about a new technology, try to even raring!) to share its benefits with
The following prompts know what our customers think” when ignore appealing graphic design and everyone else, you are likely to see
can help you work out we should say, “our current survey tools punchy marketing materials. Instead, enthusiastic uptake.
are missing product feedback”. With this work to understand what exactly your
how best to navigate this broader organisation would use it for.
in mind, when answering this question,
landscape and cultivate try to be as specific as possible.
the virtue of democracy.
12 The Virtues of Virtual: Philosophy at Work 3 questions to help you design: Democracy 13Feature Author: Nexthink the virtual workplace. IT has long
been forced to focus on the provision,
rather than the consumption, of IT
services: users’ experiences and
IT has long been
emotions were considered out of its forced to focus on
reach, remit or both. the provision, rather
Humanising Today, an employee must be
convinced that IT understands them,
and not only cares if they’re knocking
than the consumption,
of IT services
tech
their head against the kitchen table
‘home office’, but can more often than
not be depended upon to already be in
front of the problem. If organisations
need to be moderate in the manner
in which they adapt to the virtual users, and at finding ways to engage
workplace, the virtual workplace must and communicate with them – to
For some time, the core factors in the also learn to moderate itself, to be as access hard data in some moments,
traditional ‘workplace’ have been human and human-centric as possible. and to cut through bits and bytes
people, place (the office, HQ, etc.), altogether at others, just as easily
and technology. Today, however, This could prove challenging. In able to take the temperature of all the
aspects connected to ‘the office’ many instances, IT teams are being human emotion bubbling or boiling
(from hot desking to the crammed expected to transition from managing away across its user base.
commute) are looking increasingly, one or two or a handful of traditional
and perhaps permanently, outmoded. workplaces, to managing hundreds, or In many organizations, this will
In many instances, technology is being even thousands, of virtual ones. The bring IT closer to HR than ever before,
expected to make up a larger share technological complications involved not only because IT will have so much
of what counts as the ‘workplace’. As are significant. As offices become more responsibility for the wellbeing
we are forced to engage with every dispersed, opportunities for IT to glean and productivity of employees, but
aspect of professional life through the insight about the success and user because it will be the main source of
intermediary of a screen, it’s vital that experience of their tech are reduced. all those human insights HR needs
our IT services in no way resemble the There are no more knocks on the and wants.
recorded message on a help centre door of the IT office, and the absence
helpline, thanking us for our patience of watercooler insights into what’s The stereotypes around IT usually
while being insensitive to our feelings working and what isn’t heightens rely on the idea that they are a little
and frustrations. this difficulty. more comfortable with technology
than people. If there’s truth in it, it’s an
This may require a mindset shift To redress the imbalance, IT needs to instinct that requires its own kind of
among those we depend on to manage become better at thinking about its moderation in the virtual workplace.
14 Feature: Making tech human Making tech human: Feature 15A
Virtue 2: While the excess is invasive, it remains
instructive. Korey did not set out to use Slack
Accountability
Accountability as a public humiliation tool. In fact, her choices
stemmed from a fundamentally admirable
desire to solve serious workplace inclusion
In a brick-and-mortar office, conversations challenges. In a statement made to The
can grow organically to include necessary Verge, Korey explained that “over the course
parties by virtue of the fact that everyone of our careers, [Away cofounder Jen Rubio]
is in close proximity. “Communication in and I observed situations where women
an office of 40 people is easy. You can tap and underrepresented groups were often
someone’s shoulder to ask them a question, excluded from key emails or meetings,” noting
and it’s simple to involve anyone else,” that “with email, the original author gets to
explains People and Culture leader and pick who is included in the conversation and
Phrasee VP of People Michelle Davies. “But whose voices won’t be heard”.
how do you repeat messages to the people Furthermore, back-channelled
who aren’t in the room?” In the virtual office, communication can be detrimental. If a
verbal communication migrates to various conversation between colleagues that might
other forms of digital communication, from have taken place in the open office now
the official (Slack, email, and Zoom) to the occurs via phone call, anyone who previously
more casual (text, WhatsApp, and ad hoc might have chimed in with valuable input is
phone calls), and scaling the transfer of excluded. Communication, if not constructed
information becomes much more difficult. intentionally, can inadvertently cut off huge
swaths of the organisation from pertinent
The excessive reaction is strong-armed conversations.
transparency. Bruce Daisley, the author of Finally, let’s not discount the need for
Eat Sleep Work Repeat and host of the leading authority over what is shared via digital
business podcast by the same name, told us a channels when it comes to privacy and
gruesome tale of a manager. In navigating his consumer data protection guidelines like GDPR.
team’s transition to remote work, the manager
asked a direct report to WhatsApp him in The deficient reaction is loss of oversight.
advance of restroom breaks. Such excessive If the excessive reaction is mandating that
transparency has been emerging in workplaces all conversations occur centrally, then the
for some time. Many companies have deficient reaction is allowing communication
experimented with opening the conversations to take place whenever and wherever. A
taking place on their workplaces’ digital team collaborating on a project might have
platforms, occasionally with disastrous results. a side-conversation via WhatsApp during a
In December 2019, The Verge published a wider-team Zoom call to strategize around
story on luggage e-commerce start-up Away.
The article detailed how co-founder and CEO
presenting their agenda item. Rather than
iterating on a document in a cascade of How much control is too much?
Steph Korey would deliver direct feedback comments, collaborators might set up a
and occasionally brutal dressings-down to recurring Google hangout to talk through
her employees on Slack channels that were higher-level ideas. Perhaps frustrated with
deliberately left open to the entire company. email threads, one team member might throw
16 The Virtues of Virtual: Philosophy at Work Virtue 2: Accountability 17up his hands and pick up the phone. had wider positive organisational impact.
“Within the curtains, work became much more
While the deficient reaction is rife with transparent. Partly for that reason, defects
potential mishaps, it highlights what we lose remained extremely low, even as throughput
IDENTIFY
in Slack channels and long email threads. rose. And over time the camaraderie within
On a human level, communicating only in boundaries made the workers more likely to
writing is strange. “It’s weird that a bot uses share--as a group--their privately worked-out
the same format--short text--that a colleague solutions with other lines.”
WHERE
does,” says Barnes. “I don’t attribute feelings
to the bot, and I don’t think I attribute feelings The virtue is accountability. Try identifying
to a human who has written to me.” where a lack of oversight can be applied
Moreover, an irony of written strategically. You would not be relinquishing
S T R AT E G I C
communication is that its brevity can actually control entirely; in fact, you would be
create inefficiencies. Scott Berkun writes bestowing the greater responsibilities of self-
about this in his book The Year Without regulation and self-assessment to teams that
Pants, detailing his tenure as a manager at get the opportunity to work unsupervised.
Automattic, the company behind Wordpress Thinking back to the phone factory, consider
P R I VA C Y
that has involved an entirely virtual, globally projects that might warrant “accountability
distributed workforce for over a decade. curtains,” behind which teams are free to
During Berkun’s time at Automattic, the communicate and operate how they wish,
preferred channel for internal communication knowing that their work is shielded from
is needed was a private blogging platform. While totally
transparent and generally very effective, it
was not without limits. Specifically, Berkun
noted that it failed to capture nuanced
prying eyes until it is ready.
Many incredible projects have been
successfully completed in this way, including
the creation of the Linux operating system
signifiers like cadence and tone, easily in a broadly unsupervised open-source
creating opportunities for confusion and environment. In his essay “The Cathedral and
misunderstanding. “A 20 post [blog] thread the Bazaar”, software developer Eric Raymond
can sometimes be replaced by a 3 minute describes the method in the madness behind
Skype call” he writes. “Voice has more data.” Linux creator Linus Torvalds’s approach. The
Finally, well-designed loss of oversight cathedral is the top-down, traditional approach
can actually drive superior results. While to operating system development, whereas the
studying operations in a large Chinese mobile bazaar is a bottom-up, more ad hoc paradigm.
phone factory, Harvard Business School While Raymond once believed that “there was a
professor Ethan Bernstein noticed line workers certain critical complexity above which a more
were actually working to conceal process centralized, a priori approach was required,”
improvements to avoid the hassle of having he acknowledged that Torvalds’ carefully
to explain changes to management. Bernstein considered approach to breaking system
found that putting up a hospital-style curtain development into self-contained and open-
to fully enclose lines from the rest of the factory sourceable pieces (effectively “curtained-off”
floor improved the productivity of those lines factory lines) allowed contributors to self-
by 10-15%. Bernstein noted that the bump in determine their actions without receiving
productivity, the result of the lines’ privacy, clearance each step of the way.
Virtue 2: Accountability 191 23
3 questions
to help
you activate
Accountability
If you would like to have
a controlled experiment
in relinquished control, Do you have a clear idea Are you focused solely on Do you have willing and
think through the following of exactly which tasks you execution, or would you self-starting participants?
questions as guidance in will relinquish control over? like to have a little more
identifying and carrying And if something goes awry, Whoever is making the decision to
experimentation?
out these projects. open a bazaar must also be in the
will there be major negative business of building a community.
externalities? Think about the right to creativity As Raymond noted, a bazaar is only
coming with the responsibility to share as productive as its least motivated
the fruits of intellectual labour, a tenet participants, so whatever more
Before letting a project loose to be
upheld by Linus Torvalds’ bazaar decentralised project you undertake,
completed with minimal oversight,
participants. If you are looking for new make sure that your team is as bought
make sure you understand how the
innovation within specific aspects of into it as you are (if not more!).
work breaks down into its atomic units
your organisation, consider those areas
(chapters of a report, lines of code,
as candidates for relaxed control.
slides in a presentation), and think
about which of those units might need
more oversight because of complex
interdependencies or context that, for
good reason, only certain members of
the organisation can access.
20 The Virtues of Virtual: Philosophy at Work Virtue 2: Accountability 21Feature Dr. Naeema Pasha, good for business. Those employers
who already offer a four-day working
Henley Business School week told us it has several clear
benefits. For example, almost two-
Fundamentally, we
thirds (64%) of employers report an need to consider the
The
increase in productivity as well as wider value of non-
a 63% improvement in the quality
of work being produced. Part of the work as an essential
value(s) of
increase in productivity may lie in the part of our lives.
fact that staff sickness has decreased
in these businesses. In fact, 62% of
flexibility
businesses who offer the four-day
working week say that sickness
absence has been reduced. There is
also a positive impact on wellbeing,
with 70% of employers saying their lives. The, arguably, radical thinking
employees feel less stressed at work around a 4-Day week could offer us
and 78% saying their people are valuable alternatives for wellbeing,
happier as a result. society, community, and even for the
Virtual ways of working are planet in its positive impact on
characterised by increased There are, however, reasons to adopt climate change.
flexibility. Research at Henley the 4-Day Week that reach beyond
Business School in the Summer of the value of having highly productive Even though we are a modern society;
2019 found that flexible working workers. The extra day not in work we are still structuring the day job
patterns -- specifically the 4-Day Week gives employees a chance to do around the last century of work which
-- correlate with improvements in some of the other things they want was required for an industrial age –
productivity gains from efficiency and to do. This is just as important as where you needed to be in a workplace
quality. In our research, we found that organisational productivity. In my to do the work. Indeed, the 5-Day Week
half of UK businesses we surveyed say view, the debate should be about what and the 9-5 workday was developed
they have enabled a four-day working it is to be a worker now. Therefore, around an early 20th century model of
week for either some or all of their staff thinking more deeply about how work working. The creation of the ‘weekend’,
and are reaping rewards as a result. fits into life in our modern age is key. initially pushed for by worker unions in
For example, employee satisfaction It’s not just business needs we should the USA around 100 years ago, was a
has improved, employee sickness has be considering either. We should also way of then giving employees a better
been reduced, and, as a result, savings be mindful of what the extra day not in life. Having a better life is something
of almost £92 billion are being made work means to us as people, and what researchers, governments and
each year to the UK economy. it means to society. Fundamentally, industry should look at together now
we need to consider the wider value of both for matters of productivity and
We found that flexibility is actually non-work as an essential part of our because of broader social well-being.
22 Feature: The value(s) of flexibility The value(s) of flexibility: Clarity 23C
Virtue 3: Clarity messages for reasons deeper than wanting
to seem like we’re working. We actually crave
Clarity
these quick conversations because they
When you’re sitting in an office, “you can make us feel like part of a team. “There’s
show in person that your cab light is on and some really nice work showing that when
you’re ready to be hailed,” Daisley explains. teams agree to turn on rapid or transactional
It’s easy to identify our “on” colleagues. discussion, it can make people feel much more
They’re the ones engaging in conversation connected,” Daisley explains. In addition,
with the colleagues around them or sitting in the speed with which we get responses from
the canteen with a cup of coffee in between colleagues affects both how we value them
meetings. Similarly, it’s incredibly obvious who and our perception of how they value us.
is not available. They’re the colleagues who According to Daisley, “whether it’s us with
have sequestered themselves in windowless our bosses or bosses with their reports, we
phone rooms or have armed themselves with value people who respond more rapidly.”
noise-cancelling headphones. When we see Lightning responses, while distracting, have
these signs, we know we should save our the power to make individual team members
non-urgent questions for an email or that feel more valued as their inputs, questions,
day’s afternoon stand-up meeting. In a virtual and comments receive immediate recognition
environment, however, these cues tend to from other group members.
be reduced to little green icons that tell us
Get comfortable whether someone is online or not. The deficient reaction is a total retreat into
one’s own world. In recent years, due in part
with boundaries The excessive reaction is constant digital to best-sellers like Georgetown University
communication. When our status of being “at professor Cal Newport’s Deep Work and
work” is judged not by our physical presence Digital Minimalism, the idea of going offline
but by the speed with which we respond to for extended periods of time to be productive
pings and emails, we necessarily feel the has gained traction. While taking a month-
need to be hyper-connected and prove to our long hiatus from anything digital is absolutely
colleagues, direct reports, and supervisors infeasible for the vast majority of knowledge
that we are not ‘slacking off’ (pun intended). workers, even less radical solutions to pare
Being constantly accessible via digital down your digital distractions can still be
channels means that we lower the barriers potentially problematic. For instance, in Deep
to interruption, and interruptions are one of Work, Newport provides a set of criteria he
productivity’s most formidable opponents. has observed academics deploy with regard
to inbox management. Per these rules, you
While the excess is a weapon of mass can absolve yourself of responding to an email
distraction, it reveals some of our core that falls into any of the following categories:
communicative needs. Tactically, constant if it is “ambiguous or otherwise makes it hard
communication means that urgent matters for you to generate a reasonable response,” if
are resolved quickly and seamlessly. it fails to contain “a question or proposal that
Bottlenecks evaporate, and the organisation interests you,” or if “nothing really good would
is able to hum along smoothly. happen if you did respond and nothing really
More broadly, we gravitate towards instant bad would happen if you didn’t.” The idea
Virtue 3: Clarity 25is provocative and would certainly provoke precedence over the latter’s. Conversely,
ire in the vast majority of our workplaces. the choice of the latter to completely ignore
Put bluntly, choosing not to respond to the former has the same implication: her
requests because you decide that writing a work is more important than his. There is a
Brain wave
response is a poor use of your time could be solution here, and we can find ways to have
detrimental to the long-term health of your those rapid-fire digital conversations we
work relationships. find helpful for eliminating bottlenecks and
amplitudes
building team rapport while also finding
While the deficient can alienate, it is time for focused, undistracted work. The
deeply insightful. Newport’s approach is virtue lies in making the expectations that
motivated by a hard-to-swallow truth about we and our colleagues bring to work
ARE
our digitally-connected lives: attention and eminently clear.
cognition are limited resources, and every Newport suggests dividing time into
time we direct our attention away from a periods of deep work (e.g. writing articles,
task to a minor distraction, we accelerate preparing important presentations, coming
LOWERED
the depletion of these reserves. Focused, up with innovative frameworks, etc.)
cognitively-demanding work is often our most and shallow work (e.g. answering emails,
valuable, and we do ourselves and our teams a responding to simple requests, handling
disservice when we can’t do enough of it. logistics for an upcoming meeting, etc.).
WHILE
A 2016 study done at the Catholic To apply this approach to a team setting,
University of Korea confirmed that each participant must be able to articulate
smartphone notifications distract and impair their needs freely. “Boundaries are really
cognitive function. Researchers Seul-Kee Kim, important, not only for yourself as an
receiving
So-Yeong Kim, and Hang-Bong Kang found individual, but for you as a team member,”
that brain wave amplitudes were significantly says Clarke. “You need to ask, ‘Where am I
lowered in subjects asked to complete a task being pushed to a remit or a place where
smartphone
while receiving smartphone notifications. I’m not performing my best?’”.
The participants also took longer to complete Doing so, of course, is no easy task, in large
the task and made more mistakes than part because of how our culture has raised us.
their distraction-free counterparts. In short, “We’ve not been brought up to set our own
increasing the number of digital touchpoints
between you and your team--whether in the
office or remotely--can hamper rather than
enhance productivity.
boundaries and make them explicit,” Barnes
explains. “In school, we were told where to
go at what time, and most people still can’t
self-manage now because the office creates
notifications
a routine for them.” Creating such a routine
The virtue is clarity. When it comes to takes experimentation, but it also takes a
productivity, both the excess and deficient significant degree of empowerment. As
reactions suffer from the fact that they both Clarke says, “it takes a lot of strength to teach
make one person’s time and efforts more others how you want to be treated.” Consider
important than another’s. A bombardment leading by example and encouraging team
of Slack notifications from one coworker to members to share their boundaries without
another while the latter is trying to focus fear of judgment. With those boundaries laid
implies that the former’s priorities take out, honour them without compromise.
26 The Virtues of Virtual: Philosophy at Work Virtue 3: Clarity
Theme 27
X1 23
3 questions
to help
you create
Clarity
Despite some of our
cultural inclinations
to always be available, Can our team jointly If employees need to Can we clearly assign
your organisation may agree on collective times have more time offline, specific types of messages
benefit from carving out both to communicate and how should they go about to different communication
times when colleagues to disengage from the communicating this to channels?
are expected to be
conversation? the wider team?
unavailable. Little red circles with the number of new
This is an opportunity to carve out For example, find the equivalent of messages catch our attention because
Take these words of a period that is sacred for your team. a ‘cab light’ your team can turn off to they’ve been engineered to do so.
It is when you all enter a pact to go To keep the anxiety at bay, consider
wisdom from Barnes as indicate that they are now engaging
making rules for each channel you
heads-down and engage in deep, in deep work (e.g. blocking time on
you think about how you cognitively-demanding work. By the use (e.g., keep Slack for non-urgent
calendars, signing out Slack).
cultivate the virtue of same token, remember that Daisley Then, develop norms that empower messages and make phone calls for the
suggests also carving out time for most important matters).
clarity in your organization: employees to say, with enough notice,
everyone to be online and have bursts that they will be offline, for example,
“I think someone said that of transactional communication. this Wednesday apart from 1PM-2PM,
the 21st century is the worst to push a project over the finish line.
time to be a control freak,
and this is especially true
for virtual work. First,
let go of control and two,
heighten clarity.”
You may find success
by approaching it from
the following angles:
28 The Virtues of Virtual: Philosophy at Work Virtue 3: Clarity 29C
Virtue 4: Collegiality better results”. While we cannot afford this
luxury in our virtual workplace, we can use the
Collegiality
digital tools at our disposal to generate that
The physical office is a wonderful incubator. same potential for fruitful collaborations.
Even though it can be full of annoyances and For example, the skill development
distractions, being co-located does help us workshops that Philosophy at Work delivers
be more creative. Chatting with a colleague are joined by globally dispersed teams.
on another team about her work while Technological advancement has meant
waiting in the coffee queue might lead to a that during those sessions a great diversity
fantastic collaboration opportunity between of perspectives is attained. Or, similarly,
two clients. In the dispersed office, these take London yoga studio Indaba, known for
unexpected collisions are rendered non- bringing together some of the most talented
existent--or at least much harder to come by. teachers for classes and workshops. Now that
the studio is offering all of their usual classes
The excessive reaction is hyper- via Zoom, they are introducing weekly live
collaboration. We tend to fall victim to classes offered by instructors from New York Connect
this particular excess once we see how
opportunities for collaboration increase
to Athens.
often.
when we enter the virtual world. Although
we no longer have serendipitous run-ins,
The deficient reaction is under-
collaboration. Undeniably, collaboration
Collaborate
Zoom meetings mean that we can work with
anyone around the world who might bring
can generate significant administrative
overhead. There are more schedules to
intelligently
new perspectives and value to our projects. reconcile, more voices in an email thread,
However, those of us who have been on Zoom and more bottlenecks. As such, an individual
calls with more than a dozen participants contributor or a team may make the decision
are familiar with the attendant chaos. It can to keep collaboration at bay and remain
be difficult to get a word in edgewise, and laser-focused.
once discussion moves to the chat panel,
participants can easily become distracted. While isolationist, deficient
collaboration0offers important lessons.
Though excessive collaboration can be Depending on the context, efficiency is
frustrating, we still stand to gain from it. admirable. If introducing new collaborators to
When done right, collaboration produces a project would overstretch an already busy
superior results. A 2011 Harvard Medical team, then it may be the most appropriate
School study found that scientific papers decision to avoid involving anyone else.
authored by scientists whose labs and/or Moreover, just because one can collaborate
offices are physically located in the same with someone else does not mean that
building receive 45% more citations than he should. In research detailed in Morten
papers whose authors are not co-located. Hansen’s 2018 book Great at Work, Hansen
According to Kyungjoon Lee, one of the and Martine Haas studied a consulting firm
research assistants involved in the study, that had recently placed huge emphasis
“if you put people who have the potential to on cross-office collaboration to fully “bust
collaborate close together it might lead to their silos.” Hansen and Haas found that,
30 The Virtues of Virtual: Philosophy at Work Virtue 4: Collegiality 31for sales teams trying to win new clients, interviewed by Hansen and Haas revealed that
collaborating with colleagues from different they felt undue pressure to work together, as
offices actually had, in aggregate, zero working independently was seen not as being
impact. Further analysis found that teams discerning but rather as failing to be a team
with the most experience in a client’s industry player. Hansen, one of the world’s foremost
were actually less likely to win a client bid thought-leaders in professional collaboration,
when they collaborated. For these teams, warns against other major pitfalls that could
collaborating for collaboration’s sake with be avoided through collegiality: collaboration
teams with less industry experience led them without a specific goal in mind, designing a
to incorporate feedback that wasn’t helpful. collaboration without thinking through how
In these circumstances, under-collaboration you would measure the relative impact of
would have much served these teams and the the new inputs, and undertaking “expensive”
firm as a whole. collaborations where the costs (financial,
opportunity, and organisational) outweigh the
The virtue is collegiality. This virtue is about meaningful benefits.
friendly discernment. A collegial approach Findings from that 2011 Harvard Medical
recognizes that collaboration is a balancing School study also showed that not all
act and that each potential collaboration has collaboration is created equal in terms of
pros and cons that are unequally distributed impact on the quality of the work at hand.
across collaborators. Bluntly, not everyone While the study found that co-location led
who can be involved stands to gain the same to more citations, there was a significant
amount once we factor in all of the additional caveat. In scientific publications, the order
effort that goes into making a collaboration of the authors’ billing is significant. The
a success. Collegiality is a shared “first author” is the scientist who did the
understanding that choosing not to involve most legwork in terms of both research and
a colleague in a project is not a professional manuscript drafting. Typically this is a more
slight nor a failure to value that person’s input. junior member of the research team, such
It also gives permission to say “I think that, for a graduate or postdoctoral student. The
Just because you this particular matter, I might not be the right
person, but have you thought of asking X?
She is the expert”.
“last author” is a senior faculty member who
assumes a more or less supervisory role for
the first author. The “middle authors,” all other
can collaborate
Going back to the consulting firm, collaborators, appear in the order that they
Hansen and Haas found that while teams contributed to the project. Unsurprisingly,
with significant industry expertise were the study found that the papers authored
DOESN ’T
hurt by collaborating with colleagues with by co-located first and last authors were
less expertise, teams with little expertise more likely to be cited than those authored
benefited hugely from collaboration. This is by first and last authors sitting in different
obvious to us—of course getting expert input buildings. However, there was zero impact
mean you should
helps—but the dichotomy here illustrates from co-location of the first and middle
the need for collegiality and the way it lets authors, indicating that these collaborations
us graciously say no to collaboration without were generally less instrumental to the
irreparably breaking trust or damaging work final product than the first/last author
relationships. Many members of the firm collaboration.
X Theme
32 The Virtues of Virtual: Philosophy at Work Virtue 4: Collegiality 331 23
3 questions
to help
you cultivate
Collegiality
To develop collaborative
collegiality in your virtual
workplace, consider What might we be lacking? What are our various What alternatives do we
digesting the following
expertises, and who are have to the elevator/water
questions: Whenever you begin a project, be
sure to invest early on in identifying our experts? cooler/coffee machine?
important aspects of the project or A common refrain in organisations is Clarke has seen organisations
technical needs where you and your “we don’t know what we know.” effectively replicate organic ideation
team would benefit significantly from Consider creating an internal touchpoints virtually. “You can use Slack
expertise that you don’t currently have. collaboration database—even a humble channels as a brain dump. There might
Develop your shortlist from there, not shared spreadsheet in Google Drive be an opportunity for a standing Slack
just from a brainstorm of potentially might suffice—where members of meeting at 3pm on Fridays to hack what
relevant collaborators. your team can list tools, industries, you’ve been working on,” she explains.
or capabilities that they consider “You can crowdsource or share ideas,
themselves experts in, and encourage and the emphasis is not on working but
everyone to regularly update and check on thinking fluidly and creatively.”
it as they launch new projects.
34 The Virtues of Virtual: Philosophy at Work Virtue 4: Collegiality 35meaning anywhere…”. in the way they communicate with
Feature Author: Susie Alegre colleagues than they might be in a
But what do human rights mean face to face situation. Brainstorming
Human rights
in the new environment of remote in a situation where your unformed,
working where the lines between spontaneous ideas may be recorded
home and office are increasingly for posterity and held against you is
blurred? Remote working offers
& new ways
more likely to lead to brain-freeze.
great opportunities for flexibility in
the workplace which can be a great Winston Smith, the hero of Orwell’s
boost to diversity and equality of 1984 learned to “set his features into
of working
opportunity, but it also gives windows the expression of quiet optimism
into people’s private and family lives which it was advisable to wear when
that they may not always welcome and facing the telescreen.” But in his world,
can erode the clear lines between work scientific and technological progress
and home life that allow for a healthy stalled because it “depended on the
work-life balance. Some people may empirical habit of thought, which
be happy for their workmates to meet could not survive in a strictly
Respect for human rights in the their children as they wander past the regimented society”.
workplace is not just a question of computer’s camera or to share their
legal compliance, it is a pre-requisite newly decorated kitchen workspace. Developments in technology make
for a healthy and creative work But for others, their home environment increasingly ambitious claims
environment, and ultimately for a may be something they want to keep about the ways they can promote
happy and productive society. to themselves. productivity and draw insights about
our personalities, emotions, and
Eleanor Roosevelt famously said: As we increasingly live our lives thoughts from facial recognition, virtual
“Where, after all, do universal human through video platforms, aside from interviews, and analysis of speech and
rights begin? In small places, close the cameras being brought into text. There is a temptation to use these
to home - so close and so small that our homes, it is worth pausing to tools for management and recruitment
they cannot be seen on any maps of consider how video conferencing processes. But using our reliance on
the world. Yet they are the world of the can impact us as individuals. The technology in the new workplace to
individual person; the neighborhood effort of concentration required and monitor, screen, and motivate the
he lives in; the school or college our perceptions of ourselves and workforce runs the risk of undermining,
he attends; the factory, farm, or each other in video chats can leave not only privacy and freedom of
office where he works. Such are the us feeling exhausted and confused. expression, but freedom of thought
places where every man, woman, Concerns about our conversations itself. Freedom of thought is essential
and child seeks equal justice, equal being recorded or our data shared to creativity and development, if
opportunity, equal dignity without in ways that we don’t completely we are to succeed in the new work
discrimination. Unless these rights understand erode confidence and can environment, we must ensure that it is
have meaning there, they have little lead to people being more guarded nurtured, not restrained by technology.
36 Feature: Human rights & new ways of working Human rights & new ways of working: Democracy 37U
Virtue 5: that teams are happy and well while working
remotely can completely overwhelm
Understanding
Understanding schedules. “I was talking to a director who
admitted he didn’t know when he would
actually get work done because he’d been on
Virtual fatigue is real. Anyone whose Zoom calls all day with his teams,” Clarke told
work has migrated from in-person to video us. Finally, let’s not forget to honour the fact
conference knows that, at a certain point, a that many employees are introverts. While
kind of fatigue begins to set in. It’s not just extroverts might come away from pub trips
that our eyes are tired. In virtual settings, the and Zoom parties feeling energized, the same
quality of attention that we give one another may not be true for introverts.
also degrades. Not only are home offices rife
with distractions, we also have to reckon with While the excess can overwhelm, lessons
the laptop-camera paradox of only making from it are still helpful. Developing
We are human pseudo-eye-contact with our interlocutors interpersonal relationships in the workplace
when we stare into a camera rather than can help cultivate psychological safety
their faces. Moreover, the absence of casual and improve team decision-making and
conversations, team lunches, and afternoon performance. Google’s aptly named “Project
coffees can simply make us feel personally Aristotle” aimed to identify the secret sauce
forgotten. for high-performing teams by synthesizing
internal surveys and interviews with a
The excessive reaction is social rigorous scan of academic research, including
overcompensation. With the shift to virtual a study on collective team intelligence done
working has come an increased sensitivity by scholars from Union College, MIT, and
to wellness in the workplace. While this Carnegie Mellon. This study found that group
transformation is undeniably positive, its intelligence—measured by performance on
manifestations can sometimes miss the mark. cognitive tasks—was positively correlated
According to Davies, moving from being in- with something other than team members’
office or partially virtual to fully remote puts individual intelligences. It boiled down to a
us in the strange situation of scrambling to group’s average social sensitivity (i.e., the
rapidly digitize in-person activities and norms. ability of group members to intuit their team’s
This has not always turned out well. “We’ve emotional states based on non-verbal cues),
overcompensated for it in some places,” she commitment to taking turns in discussions,
explains. Take, for instance, an extracurricular and proportion of women participants. This
choir that met weekly in a conference room at research corroborated the findings of Project
Davies’ physical office. After her organisation Aristotle from within Google that employees
transitioned to virtual, the choir continued are happiest and most productive when they
weekly practices via video conference…with know they will be listened to and that their
mixed results. “What worked in a conference emotions will be valued.
room—singing together—just didn’t feel the
same in a room in a house that you’re sharing The deficient reaction is being all business.
with a partner or flatmate” she explains. Many of us have had coworkers who, while
Furthermore, dedicating time to ensuring affable, took a pass on office social activities.
38 The Virtues of Virtual: Philosophy at Work Virtue 5: Understanding 39Perhaps they had busy family lives, or maybe our teams feel seen and heard in a virtual
they simply preferred a separation of work office by paying attention to our colleagues
and play. In the virtual workplace, dialling and developing a nuanced and respectful
back our workplace socialising is a simple understanding of their emotional needs.
feat: it’s much easier to decline a calendar When we spoke to workplace happiness
invitation for a Zoom pub quiz than it is to experts for this report, they all emphasized the
decline participation to our colleagues’ faces importance of acknowledging feelings in work
before dashing for the bus home. conversations. However, the degree to which
we probe varies, requiring us to continuously
While the deficient can be isolating, it is recalibrate and make sure we respect our
still instructive. The desire to build a wall colleagues’ social and emotional autonomy. “I
between our professional and personal lives always talk about open-sourcing data, and that
is not without cause, especially given how includes my feelings,” Barnes says. “I would
working from home erases the boundaries encourage everyone to do that, but it has to
between our work and private lives. “My office be made their choice. If I’m forcing you to be
is now my dining room table,” explains Davies. transparent, I’m also invading your privacy.”
“It’s so much harder to ‘turn off’ when my work We can begin, Barnes explains, by starting
is always right there.” When the day’s work is conversations with a simple “how are you?”.
done at the home office, it’s actually important Davies agrees. When building trust and
HOW
for us to disconnect entirely to cook dinner or understanding in the virtual workplace,
spend time with loved ones, even if it means “asking how people are doing just becomes
missing out on the chatter of a pre-scheduled part of the conversation,” she says. Clarke
5pm Zoom social hour. also agrees that now we need to bring
Moreover, Yale School of Management questions about well-being to the front of our
ARE WE
Professors Emma Seppälä and Marissa King conversations. “The human-ness has to be
show that maintaining a bustling social brought more to life when we’re online.” Once
network in the workplace can have drawbacks. we know how a colleague is doing, we also
They cite a 2016 article study from Personnel need to listen and tailor our communication
SUPPOSED
Psychology in which researchers found that accordingly. To do so is to make our
while positive supervisor assessments of understanding active.
employee job performance increased with Outside of addressing emotions head-on,
the number of friendships an employee had there are small changes we can make to
in the workplace, self-reported emotional
exhaustion and maintenance difficulty also
increased. They also mention a 2017 study,
foster a foundation of understanding without
being overbearing. “Don’t underestimate the
value of trivial social ties,” Daisley explains. to connect when
we can only stare
published in the Journal of Business and “Remote work is stressful because people
Psychology, which found that workplace won’t see a boss smile at them on the lift or
friendships can be detrimental to team get to exchange hellos with the big boss by
into a camera?
performance when interpersonal conflict the coffee machine.” Send a junior colleague
arises. By contrast, conflicts between non- you don’t know well an email congratulating
friends actually improved team performance! her on a recent success, and ping a new hire to
let him know your virtual door is always open
The virtue is understanding. We ensure that for questions.
40 The Virtues of Virtual: Philosophy at Work Virtue 5: Understanding
Theme 41
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